


Hit the Ground and Miss

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: Kakashi's emotions can be split into two categories: those the entire ninja population knows about due to the wide distribution of bingo books, and ones about Guy. Sometimes, he wonders if only the ones known to every shinobi nation are worth keeping. (He keeps pining for Guy anyway.)





	Hit the Ground and Miss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



"How’s your friend?" Shikaku asks, his voice low. They’re infiltrating the Daimyō’s court and need an ongoing discussion to pass under the cursory glance of the guards, but Kakashi has no idea why his jounin commander had to pick that particular topic. He doesn’t remember a friend in his briefing.

"Who?"

Shikaku scratches his nose. His pinkie curls in—Konoha sign language for 'not mission essential' — what Kakashi would like to know is why he’s asking, then.

"You know, your friend, the taijutsu master."

It takes a while for Kakashi to process what Shikaku is getting at. He hasn’t thought of Guy as a friend, just that weird guy who keeps showing up and who is inexplicably invited to all the family get-togethers because that’s the way it has always been. It sure must seem like he’s a friend, because he isn’t anything else.

"Good," Kakashi says. He’s short about it, because what is there to say about Guy? He simply is there, and sometimes they happen to train together, that was all.

"You don’t have a lot of them," Shikaku says.

From anyone else Kakashi would think that was a threat, but he knows Shikaku—that’s too obvious of an interpretation of what he’s saying. It might have been a note that Kakashi is known for killing his friends, teammates, traitors to Konoha. Kakashi is a very good soldier, and he know his duty.

"Yes," Kakashi says.

They’re past the guards now, and Shikaku sighs a deep and troubled, "Bothersome." Kakashi didn’t think the Daimyō’s guards were that skilled. Then again, he’s been running a lot of S-ranked stealth missions lately. That was probably skewing his perspective.

 

Even back in the quiet of his home, the conversation sticks to his mind, however. He doesn’t think about other people often, and less in relation to himself. Kakashi has gone through life in spite of the people around him, who seem to be dropping like flies or leaving him behind.

Guy is a lone exception, and he’s been clinging to Kakashi rather like a particularly impressive burr. He’s also awfully green, to torture the metaphor further.

Kakashi doesn’t really have much use for people. They’re bothersome at best to borrow the expression, and he’s never been one to form attachments of any kind. For the basic touch contact, he’d rather cuddle with his dogs anyway. He’s already passed his internal threshold of when to expect— attraction, let’s call it that. All of his teammates have gone through puberty before him, and the urge to pair up with everyone willy-nilly has seemed to pass him by, thankfully. A lot of the time romance seems rushed on the battlefield, too, which feels weird to him since he wants to explore his options. He has problems showing his face in the privacy of his own bathroom, how is he supposed to get naked enough for genitals to touch in the middle of the blood and gore? The logistics alone are pretty much beyond him.

Kakashi is a teenager, knows intellectually that he’s right in the middle of his body changing. He can follow so far as it disrupts his training, as it keeps him off-balance, focuses his mind on the irrelevant instead of the useful. It’s the reason he’s cranky all the time, though his loudmouthed subordinates think it’s because he doesn’t have enough of a love-life. Most of them are well past their own body changing, and have forgotten the pain of working through the aches, the sudden problems of overbalancing. Have forgotten or never knew how to retrain their bodies until they are in peak conditioning, whereas Kakashi already had the abilities of an elite ninja and had survived first losing an eye, and then regaining one with different abilities. Now he’s as clumsy as a civilian again, just because his hand-eye-coordination has gone all wonky and his body parts fail at their most important functions.

That’s the least of his problems, too. He gets aroused by a stiff breeze, whether or not he thinks about anything in particular at all. Kakashi would really like to give his maturing body back, thank you. What use is an increased strength and stamina when it comes with thoughts and feelings and manages to make his entire training sequences obsolete?

But the act of falling in love—Kakashi rather thought that was beyond him.

And friends, well. He doesn’t really seem built for them. Friend-Killer Kakashi, they call him, and it hurts all the more because it’s true. He doesn’t need more of them. His dogs should be enough.

Guy, well, Guy is simply leftover from when Kakashi still thought he could be someone different.

 

He puts the conversation out of his mind. There are missions to run. And so Kakashi is on his way back from Stone before the topic crosses his thoughts again.

Considering Stone’s frequent search for bloodlines and their rather creative methods of acquiring them and Kakashi’s two known bloodline gifts, he’s in very good shape. That does mean he lost more than a liter of blood if he’s keeping track right, and his chakra is so low it might as well be depleted. He’s running on fumes at this point, more stumbling across branches than running over them.

He’s past the first Konoha outpost, but the guard doesn’t call—either there’s more pursuers coming behind him or Kakashi’s reputation as friend killer manages to stay their help. Either way, nothing he can do about it. He could be bitter, but that’s effort he can’t really manage at the moment. Or ever. It’s not surprising that they think he’s too dangerous to approach. Kakashi would think he’s too dangerous to approach, with his reputation and half out of his mind with pain he really doesn’t know what he’d do to a helpful medic who doesn’t know how to suppress his chakra.

The surprise comes from a more unexpected source. Kakashi stumbles over a branch for the last time, and then he doesn’t manage to catch himself because his chakra reserves give out.Head first, he falls down. He tries to brace himself, pinches his eyes shut against the hard whip of the branches flying past him. The impact is going to fuck him up anyway, no doubt about it.

But then Kakashi lands softer than he expected, feels someone else take the impact as if it was as easy as breathing. Inexplicably, he thinks of Minato-sensei and his father, and he opens his eyes and sees gentle eyes and hair that is ludicrously straight-cut compared to his former bushy hair. Instead of any of the sappy things that want to fall out of his mouth, he says to Guy who probably saved his life, "Good catch."

He hadn’t thought he’d imprinted on Guy so hard, but his smell in his nostrils is a relief after the smoke of the bastions he crossed. Guy’s arm envelops him completely, and they feel so very strong.

The last he manages to see is Guy putting him softly on the ground, more careful with Kakashi’s body than with juggling raw eggs. He’s glad he’s unconscious, or almost there. Now he doesn’t have to suffer through the indignity of thanking Guy for being careful, of making sure that Guy understands how much Kakashi appreciates the help even with their rivalry. Guy deserves that at least, and more besides that, but Kakashi hasn’t been socialised well (or at all, really) and he doesn’t know how to say any of this in a way that wouldn’t be extremely creepy.

 

Nothing comes of it, of course. Kakashi is out of the count for quite a while, and when he wakes up in Konoha’s hospital he sneaks out before anyone can demand anything from him. (Like say, an overdue psych eval.)

He tries desperately to put this strange aberration of his behaviour out of mind. It was probably a symptom of staying in enemy territory for too long.

Guy wasn’t at his bedside either like Kakashi had halfway expected, although the single sunflower beside his hospital bed doesn’t look like standard inventory. Kakashi doesn’t feel a pang at not seeing him— why would he be expecting anyone at his bedside? And beside the collapsed lung and the bone spurs in his hip, he’s exactly the same as he ever was, his mind focused on training while his body is trying to grow to full adult-size as fast and as inconvenient as possible.

Soon enough, he’s back to stumbling over branches because his brain thinks his body is smaller and not because he’s bone-deep exhausted and healing his wounds. He might still be very exhausted, but that’s par for the course: Konoha is still understaffed, and most of the fighting force is running double and triple shifts to stay on top. That’s the reason he hasn’t seen anyone lately, Kakashi tells himself, and it’s not because he’s too weak to function, and a non-functioning shinobi might as well be a dead one.

He doesn’t run into Guy again, might even be avoiding him a bit in case that feeling was a one-off and the next time he saw him Kakashi would want to feel annoyed and run away again. (He feels annoyed even so. Why does it have to be Guy? Why not someone conveniently dead, or absolutely inappropriate, like say, the Hyuuga clan-head.)

During one of his self-punishment-session in the Forest of Death, he falls of plenty of trees. Sometimes, one of his training partners, his ANBU team, helps him navigate the space between the giant leeches and fire-breathing tigers and boulder-sized mouses.

Then, of course, even his self-punishment session gets interrupted. There’s a loud bang, before a giant leafed tree flies into his general direction. Kakashi, with his panicked first reaction still a better soldier than he’d ever admit, takes to the trees like a silent deadly omen, and only afterwards thinks about the Forest of Death being surrounded on all sides by Konoha outposts.

"Yosh! The Youthfulness of your struggle is commendable!" Kakashi hears before a great sabre tiger passes followed by a green, slightly neon flash. They leave a trail of destruction, tree stumps flying to the left and right.

If Kakashi had been anyone else, his shock would be visible. With the mask in front of his face, there’s only a slight wetness to his mask where he left his mouth open. Abruptly, he sucks in air. The enthusiasm he remembers but he didn’t really put it together with that much strength or ever thought he could show feats like that. If his father was alive, he’d make him eat his words.

Nimbly, Kakashi hurries back to the forest floor, just as the pair swerve and turn back into his direction. This time, he stands his ground. The feeling comes back in full force, a storm cloud gathering into a tsunami until even Kakashi with his rather lacking emotional availability can’t help but feel bowled over from the experience.

He’s glad that he decided to do this without his teammates or his dog summons, because he could say exactly what their reaction would be. He doesn’t need his dogs pointing out that his hormones are completely out of whack.

"Yo," he says, half-heartedly waving his fingers, because that’s how greetings go, right? "Need some help?"

Guy — because there’s only one person in the entire village who would dress in a green, skintight jumpsuit, and it’s genetically transferable apparently — stops in the middle of his chase and gawks at Kakashi. His muscles are bulging underneath the almost transparent material. Kakashi has to swallow. He didn’t know that this was what got him going, but his maturing body disabused him of the notion that he had something like taste. Surely, there was someone better than this.

"My Eternal Rival!" Guy is looking at him as if he’s the only reason the sun will go up tomorrow. It doesn’t help Kakashi distract himself from the way Guy‘s muscles bunch up. He’s about double Kakashi’s size and leaves him utterly breathless. Kakashi‘s body has been betraying him for a while now but this tops every other betrayal—Guy, really? There’s a beat or two where Kakashi isn’t quite sure what Guy intends to do, if this is going in a different direction than— "Are you up for a challenge?"

Kakashi would like to challenge Guy to a bout of horizontal tango, or vertical against a tree, he isn’t picky. He doesn’t say anything about it and instead slouches against the nearest tree. "Does it involve sabre tigers? If it does, I abstain."

Guy awkwardly scuffs away some of the tiger blood with his feet. "In the interest of equality and fairness, it’s your turn to pick the challenge!" Guy still sounds enthusiastic. Kakashi, however, feels a little bit bad for making most of his challenges "hip and cool" instead of the kind of crazy he knows they both get off on.

There’s something to be said for keeping people at arm's length but that also meant that Kakashi had to stay strong in the face of Guy’s disappointment, and while he never made it seem like he was, Kakashi had known him for a long time. "I bet you can’t run blindfolded to the Hokage monument faster than me." Kakashi slouches further, every single muscle primed to react to whatever Guy will do with the first real challenge in years.

The look on Guy’s face is the best thing that ever happened to him. Then, Guy tackles him with the same enthusiasm he invested into the sabre tigers. There are tears. There might even be a genjutsu. Kakashi takes the hug like a rag-doll and definitely doesn’t sigh into the packed muscle mass. Guy is really built like a brick wall. It’s amazing. Try as he might, Kakashi doesn’t pack on the kind of muscles that Guy does. He’s a tank—Kakashi’s fighting style is built an evasion and stealth.

"Eternal Rival! I appreciate your youthful means of trying to cheer me up! Your ardour is appreciated! I shall run to the Hokage Monument blindfolded or proclaim your coolness before the entire jounin brigade!"

"Mah, mah, it’s just a tiny challenge, don’t go overboard," Kakashi says, and pats the wide, broad back he definitely doesn’t want to hang off on. "If I knew it would make you this happy, I’d have done it long before."

There’s now a small puddle of water forming around their feet. Kakashi is pretty sure it’s an over-dramatic genjutsu, or else Guy is trying to cheat before Kakashi is really willing to let go of him. Mightily sneaky of him, but Kakashi is used to this by now. He could never admit to it of course, but Guy is an amazing shinobi and Konoha would be poorer without him.

"I’ll make you acknowledge me," Guy says, suddenly quite serious. "It’s within reach now. You set a challenge, the first one that you’ve taken seriously, and now I know I am almost there. Just wait, I will catch up to you."

Kakashi is glad to have his mask to hide behind because Guy has already surpassed him. He may not have the reputation of Kakashi of the Sharingan (but who would want his kind of reputation?) but he was stronger than Kakashi already. Certainly more settled. In any case more psychological stable. Despite, you know, Guy’s general Guyness.

"Are we going to set roots in the ground, or are we doing this?" Kakashi asks and pats Guy on his shoulders once more just to feel how they’re really real. The hot flash that surges through his body answers that question quite surely. He wants to sink into a hole in the ground. It’s only physical, he tells himself to feel better but it doesn’t work.

"My cool and hip rival!" Guy says and it might even be more enthusiastic than usual. Kakashi regrets everything. "How youthful and eager of you to want to compete so suddenly!"

Kakashi braces for the hug, maybe longing for it already, but for once in his life Guy has learned restraint. He doesn’t touch him—and he avoids all touch even after they make their way to the Hokage monument. Kakashi wins, although he has to cheat and substitute with a log on the last stretch to make it before Guy.

Guy doesn’t touch him then, either, and somehow Kakashi feels as if he’s the one who lost.

 

Suddenly, Kakashi can’t go to the corner store to stock up on rice and beans without running into Guy. He doesn’t mind someone accompanying him home, though he’s still able to carry his own bag, and there’s no need for anyone to carry them. He may have gray hair but that doesn’t mean he’s going senile.

Guy was everywhere. Through years Kakashi has tried to keep his contact with other people to a minimum. He thought he was successful at reigning in his emotional attachments. There was his team, yes, but since he mostly saw them in enemy territory and with their masks on it wasn't like there was a deep emotional connection based on anything other than shared drama. And masks got retired and reassigned ever day. If Kakashi hadn't checked his mission statement once in a while he'd never know when they changed. (Okay, that was a bit of a lie.)

Still, the belief that he didn't have many connections back to the village was mostly true, in that occasionally the Hokage would frown at his psychological evaluation and say, "You really should think about taking a break once in a while, Hound-san." This never turned into a reassignment, of course, not like whenever Minako-sensei had gotten worried Kakashi was overworking himself, and so Kakashi thought things weren't yet so bad.

Suddenly, however, he couldn't take a walk through the village without stumbling over Guy. He signed up to missions with regular jounins seldom enough, and yet somehow there's three in a row, with a team that always happens to include Guy, like it's a coincidence. Someone in the Hokage's Office really seems to hate him. And it's worse because Kakashi doesn't really want to avoid Guy in the first place. He likes to bask in his easy charm, the way he constantly strives to be better, do better every hour of the day. Then, there's his back hidden underneath his bodysuit and various other accruements -- Kakashi is thoroughly distracted by his thighs, too, and the way his straight, so very straight bangs keep falling over his eyes.

There's Guy on the mission to Waterfall, that coincidentally leaves them drenched in a rainstorm--not that Guy's suit needed to be waterlogged to be almost transparent. Nor that Kakashi had looked. There's the mission to Sand where Kakashi almost gets a heatstroke because if Guy could outshine something, then it was the desert.

What Kakashi is beside hopelessly in love, is also a master of stealth and secrets. He doesn't have a handle on any of his reactions and Tenzō would laugh if he could see him, but his reaction isn't very dramatic.

Kakashi gets send on a border patrol and thinks he has finally broken his streak of seeing Guy everywhere. Instead of being relieved, however, he keeps expecting Guy to just pop around the corner and offer to carry his bags. It’s disconcerting and very distracting. So much so that even Jiraiya who is distracted by ogling the prettier girls in the villages they pass picks up on it.

He's distracted by every shadow in the tree. When the patrol arrives he keeps craning his neck for Konoha's green beast. With every loud noise, he braces himself for the barrage of emotions that well up in him at the sight of Guy. Of course, now that he's braced against his appearance, he can't help the pang of disappointment when Guy fails to arrive and instead he's forced to deal with all the people that aren't Guy.

"What's got you so tense, kid?" Jiraiya asks, who is, of course, the team leader and Kakashi can't really tell him to shut up and concentrate on his mission. Not that any of his regular teammates listen to that either.

"Is it love?" Jiraiya continues, but the sannin isn't satisfied with his conclusion. "It must be stress, I'm sure. You work too hard, kid, there's something to be said for tossing one off once in a while."

"Stop harassing the poor boy," their third, a Yamanaka who seems to know too much about Kakashi's psych file, interrupts his teasing. "There's places you can go if he keeps bugging you, you know," he tells Kakashi in an undertone.

"That's what she said!" Jiraiya belts out loudly and unabashed. His laughter is braying, but somehow Kakashi is still more embarrassed by the Yamanaka.

"I'm good," he tells them both. Neither seem to be believing his words. Jiraiya takes him aside and presses a stack of papers into his hands, roughly bound and paged through. "It's no good to keep it all pent up inside," Jiraiya tells him. "You should read it and think good thoughts, maybe the tension will come out." And then he laughs again, slaps his shoulder so hard Kakashi sinks into the ground, and then ambles away whistling.

The Yamanaka looks at him and says, "Seriously, if he bothers you—or if you're bothered by anyone else—there's a secretary at the Hokage's office who can provide help."

Kakashi says nothing. He thinks longingly about Guy popping out of the woodwork and making it more awkward—but at least with Guy he has the option of ogling his muscles.

Then, later, when he has a bit of time for himself, he makes the mistake of opening those pages. And at first the opening paragraphs are engaging, two kunoichi trying to assassinate the same guy and managing to set their traps against each other instead of the intended victim, but then the narration goes on to lovingly describe the victim and Kakashi can't help but compare him to Guy. That's especially inconvenient as a few pages later, the victim is beset by angry kunoichi who steal his virtue by... well, and now Kakashi is fantasising about Guy's junk and what he would like to do with it. It doesn't help his tension at all. His pants are suddenly too tight and breathing is a bit of a crapshot—and worse, he knows that both the Yamanaka and Jiraiya are sensitive to unexpected noises. He wants— he wants to sink into the ground and die, that’s what he wants.

He can’t put the book down, however. The two women double-team the victim who looks like Guy, and while Kakashi gets hot-flashes just thinking about someone else doing things to Guy, he could probably hold a shadow clone for long enough to do unspeakable things. Whenever Jiraiya sees him walking into or off trees, he smirks. The Yamanaka is increasingly worried. So is Kakashi, to be honest.

 

Back in the village, Kakashi has to watch Guy pick out carrots and leeks and zucchini and eggplant and other, increasingly phallic vegetables. Afterward, Guy starts a conversation about something or another, but Kakashi has no idea what he agrees to or what was said.

He’s fallen in love with the strong set of shoulders, and the way that Guy never shies away from touching him, and the way he seems to lose his thread entirely from his "cool and hip" reaction. It’s not the blood loss, it’s the embarrassment of going with Guy of all people. He remembers the embarrassment of being declared a "rival" and worse, the condescension of his dad when he complained about it. The bushy hair, oh, how could he forget about that. But somehow, when he hadn’t been looking Guy had grown to this epitome of a shinobi—and one of the few who would still catch him when he was falling. How could he have resisted?

Somehow, he goes home with Guy, carrying a fish. He has no idea how, but Guy has probably used his absentmindedness against him like the ruthless killer he is. He shouldn’t be underestimating Guy ever again, and yet he can’t help but be tricked into spending time with him again and again. Apparently, it’s curry night.

Starting a thing with Guy isn’t a good idea, he tells himself. He’s in Anbu. He’s an elite jounin. He doesn’t have time for dalliances. If the thing with Guy ends badly, Kakashi would probably get a psychotic break and kill his entire clan. Mechanically, he starts chopping the vegetables Guy puts in front of him.

He stays through dinner. There’s a candle at the table, but he can’t help but keep staring at Guy.

 

He’s moping around so much that the Hokage makes him take a psychological evaluation, even though he knows Kakashi will fail and be kept out of commission for a month or two.

His cheeky subordinates keep telling him that there’s no way to fail a psych eval, but obviously, they don’t know what they’re talking about because just as Kakashi suspected, he gets grounded.

"I’m sorry, I cannot let you return to active duty," the Yamanaka says.He looks worried as fuck, too, and that just takes the biscuit since Kakashi’s been such a shining example of a model shinobi, what with all the friends he killed. Not that he’s been counting or anything, or ran out of space on his hands. Soon enough, he’d run out of feet, too, and then he’d need to count on the adorable lucky paws of his dogs and then where would they be? In a sadder place, surely.

And while Kakashi’s been anticipating this sentence or one very similar for a long time, years and years and a different Hokage ago, it makes his heart palpitate and his world turn upside down even so. There’s something terribly upsetting about someone telling you something you knew all along. Kakashi has been familiar with it, always doling about the lessons he himself can’t learn.

"I know it must be difficult for a shinobi so deep in combat all the time, Hatake-san, to suddenly revert to the menial work in-village," the Yamanaka continues, and Kakashi is baffled that he still seems to be able to follow along with his words, make sense of them, even though his world broke apart.

"You’re destroying yourself, Hatake-san. What will you do when you are finally going to arrive at the cliff that you're running towards?"

"Jump off, of course," he replies, feigning his certainty with the skill of a master. He could do anything he wanted. He was Kakashi of the Sharingan, and his legend was only growing.

The Yamanaka sighs. "Fine. Please do try to find someone else to put on your next-of-kin form, I’ve told you repeatedly that summons don’t count."

There comes a time in ones life, Minako-sensei had said once, when you're less bothered by growing your own legend than making sure others around you are able to grow their own legends. And Kakashi was suddenly very clear about what to do next: It was Guy’s turn.

It doesn’t take him long to find Guy, who admittedly, also hadn’t been hiding for the past couple of days. He’s in training ground 44, followed by three adorable genin.

Something in Kakashi wants to turn around and hide, and he doesn’t stop himself. Guy, and the additional audience, is too much for him, especially coming off a psych eval. He watches from the safety of a tree how Guy teaches the tramps not to underestimate someone just because he looks and talks silly.

He doesn’t know how to feel about this. Kakashi could have taken on a genin team himself, although his were spineless, witless cowards who did everything he told them to do. Which was stupid, as that’s what subordinates should be doing. But alas, training genin was out of his skillset anyway. What did he know about being a ninja except silently killing things?

There are two things wrong with Guy’s genin team.

First, just because Guy can’t nilly-willy drop them and continue jumping in on Kakashi’s missions like some benevolent apparition doesn’t mean that Kakashi can stop looking for him in the woodwork. There was just something so very reassuring about having Guy at his back. Now that it’s gone, he misses it. Misses him. There’s nothing he can do about it. Technically, he’s suspended, so he’s only getting the time-sensitive missions no one else is capable of, and still, he can feel himself grow grumpier the more mission he runs without Guy.

And then also, Guy’s genin team just happens adorable. He has a tiny weapon's mistress who reminds him of Uzumaki Mito, a mini-Guy who is way too impressionable, and a tiny ball of repressed anger in the guise of a Hyuuga-- it's a team that's really been made for Guy who is less on the flashy jutsu side and more on the 'devastating fighter' side of the whole shinobi business. And, unlike Kakashi, he's socially aware enough to notice when his students will go batshit insane and murder their entire clans, and so he might stop the Hyuuga from going the way of the Uchiha.

Kakashi spends too much of his time watching them train. He knows that Guy is aware of him watching but he never lets on to his genin, which is too bad. They could learn a lot from watching him and Guy spar—and maybe that way he’d get the urge to touch Guy out of his system.

Kakashi has to content himself with his porn, which is always only half as entertaining. Truly, his life is hard.

 

Then, the newly minted Team 3 goes on a border watch. Three long months of never seeing Guy in his favourite spaces, of sitting in trees and not hearing enthusiastic shouts and grunts and weapons training, three months without anyone inviting him for curry or drinks or spars. It’s tough. Especially since he keeps imagining Guy on his grocery shopping trips and assassinations. Guy comes to him in his dreams and waking hours, and just because Kakashi’s the one imagining him, that doesn’t stop him from being annoyed.

So when Guy appears at his side, his clothes fresh and hair flowing just so, Kakashi doesn’t react. Guy talks and talks about his genin and his missions, none of which is surprising to Kakashi who has maybe looked into their destination and purpose. It's only when Guy deviates from the usual script and touches his arm, that he realises. Guy is here. Guy is _real_.

"Won't you come eat curry with me?" Guy asks, plaintively. 

That was enough. Kakashi couldn’t take it anymore. They are out in the open, which needs to be rectified immediately and talking about genin and food which is also not quite what he wants.  He shoves Guy out of the way, into a darker section of the street. Guy moves with him, doesn’t resist. Hidden in the shadow of Guy’s shoulders, he pulls down his mask, and before there’s a conversation about why Kakashi feels the need to hide himself away, or worse: a conversation about his intentions, he presses Guy further against the wall and kisses him.

Guy sinks into the kiss like it’s anything he ever wanted. His hands come up to cradle Kakashi’s face, and he’s so fucking careful about touching him. Kakashi tugs on his hair, and then there’s the fire he longed for in addition to the tenderness Guy can’t let go for a minute.

It’s anything he ever wanted. He can’t believe this worked.

"I can’t believe this worked," Guy mumbles against his lips.

Kakashi rears back. "You can’t believe what worked?" he asks, alarmed, since he knows the kind of devious mind games Guy likes to play. Konoha’s Green Beast is mighty and knows how to get what it wants.

Guy caves because of the look. "Seducing you by training the kids," he admits, a bit sheepishly.

Kakashi blinks. Then, he blinks again. "Excuse me, what?" he says.

"I thought for sure the way to your heart where manly displays of strength. I tried for years—and when you stayed cold even to my awesome feat of catching you at full speed, I had to change tactics." Guy peers at him through his lashes. "At least you ate the curry I cooked for you. I couldn’t get you to go out to get drinks with you—and I got kind of desperate with the kids. I still can’t believe that’s the thing that worked."

"It didn’t work!" Kakashi protests. "I didn’t kiss you because you were good at training kids!"

"So you admit that I’m good at training kids?"

"You did not seduce me with your training skills," Kakashi pronounces. He’s not sure Guy is hearing him, with the kisses he peppers against the edge of his mask. He thinks back to Guy catching him with the same strong arms he’s holding him up against the wall now, and then thinks about saying that out aloud— "Maybe you did seduce me with your training skills," Kakashi mumbles. There would be time for revenge later.


End file.
